


Of history and herstory

by JaqofSpades



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: 12 Days of Ficmas, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2889638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It was who he was.  The Wolverine to her Rogue.  Who he always would be.  Even if he never got to be the Logan to her Marie.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of history and herstory

He remembers.

Charles has had a glimpse of the lost, unlamented future, but Logan alone lives with crushing weight of it, the terror that something will somehow rip all of this away. He looks at Beast, and can't help but see that red, spreading stain around a Sentinel's spike. He catches Iceman in the corner of his eye and remembers the little noises Shadowcat had made as they stole some privacy in the corner of an old warehouse. He looks at Rogue, and … he doesn't look at Rogue.

He can't bear to remember Rogue.

She laughs, and she's dancing around him, teasing, tickling him with her own claws as he harrumphs and growls and snapped the order to stand down. She'd done as she was told, his Rogue, too well-trained a soldier, and he'd pounced, pinning her to the ground and covering her face in kisses.

He's remembering the taste of her, lips and tongue and secret places it feels a violation to remember, in this timeline.

The one where she was never his.

Logan is still putting it together, the chain of events that led him here. Some things are the same – somehow along the way, he's still managed to acquire an adamantium skeleton. But something changed, because he doesn't dream about it any more, doesn't wake with his covers shredded and heart bursting with the horror of the tank, the surgeons, the indescribable pain. (Instead, he watches Rogue die, over and over, as he's pinned under the bulk of a fallen Sentinel. He'd lain there two days before the mechs came to clean up, watching the birds pick her over, the hole in his throat, his useless arms, making it impossible to scare them away.) But he doesn't get the old nightmares any more, and he's beginning to think Rogue never saw a need to wake him up. He's not in her head. He's certainly not in her life.

The intimate little smile he thinks of as his smirks at Drake now. They hold hands everywhere, and give the boy a medal - he's learned not to flinch away from her bare skin. She's been able to control it for years, the Professor says with a smile that makes Logan look away and pray this man is as principled as the one he'd known.

Everybody goggles the first time he calls her Marie.

“Mah name is Rogue,” she corrects gently, but he can see the shock in her eyes. And the questions.

He and Xavier have decided to keep the tale of the averted future to themselves, and the gaps in Logan's memory are explained away as the results of too much experimentation at Stryker's hands. He pores over the history books to catch up, but his own history, their history, will never be there, and that's what Logan needs to know most.

Because it's killing him, not knowing how they met. What happened between them. How the hell he ended up back here, seemingly embroiled in yet another affair with Jean Grey, cuckolding a man he respects, while hiding his devotion to a girl more than a century his junior.

And he's not good at hiding it.

Not when she makes a point of tracking him down, sitting herself on the hood of the Benz he's tinkering with, prepared to wait all day if she has to. He's flooded with the memory of what he used to do when she had that mulish face on, how he he'd trail his fingers up her neck and blow into her ear and whisper filthy little suggestions to give her something else to focus on, and how sometimes, it even worked. Now, though, he makes the job last twice as long, then pushes the gurney out from under to confront that warm brown gaze.

“Something you want, kid?” 

“How do you know my real name?” she asks, and “Don't call me kid.”

And his heart breaks, because his Rogue, his Marie, had known why he did that. She'd complained about it enough when she was a teenager, then confessed she kinda liked it. And he'd been stupid drunk, and she was still way too young, but he'd blurted it out anyway.

“I'm reminding myself,” he'd mumbled, and she'd just looked at him, all her hopes in her eyes, and slid her gloved hand over his.

“We'll be together, won't we?” she'd asked eventually, and he told her no, it wasn't right.

“C'mon, sugar. Some things aren't about right, or proper. Some things are just inevitable,” she'd told him, his wise little girl. And she'd been right, the years they spend back to back the happiest of his life, the most whole, until, suddenly. They're not.

They never were.

And he's staring at a woman who belongs to someone else, who isn't really his Rogue, groping uselessly for an answer that will sound vaguely credible.

“Saw it in some files,” he mutters eventually, and shuffles round to the other side of the car so she can't see his lying face. His Rogue, he knows, wouldn't accept that bullshit for a second, but this girl just raises an eyebrow, considering, then shrugs.

“Guess you'll tell me the truth when you're ready, sugah,” she drawls, and pushes herself up from the car to waltz away, ass swaying just the way she doesn't know he loves.

His growl fills the air, and she stops. Looks over her shoulder, and her mask slips. She's sad, and frustrated, and mad as hell. 

“You nearly died to save me, Logan. Would it kill you to let me grow up?”

He forgets to breathe, for a minute, his mind scrabbling to catch up. Magneto hadn't come near them, in this existence. Logan had been an X-man from the start, and Rogue still visited her folks down Mississippi every now and then. And yet, somehow, that defining moment in their history had still managed to take place.

She'd fallen in love with him then, she'd confessed once. His voice in her head, first, and later, his hands on her body. (Everywhere, she'd panted. She wanted him to touch her everywhere, and he was helpless, in that moment, even as his conscience excoriated him. Lost, because she was his, _his_ , and Scott was dead and Jean was dead and the Professor was dead and God knows who else, and he needed, _needed_ her to be alive.)

But that was it, wasn't it, Logan tells himself. The reason he'd travelled through time. The world needed the X-men, needed the Professor and Jean and Cyclops and maybe even an old-as-dirt renegade to kick ass occasionally, so they changed things.

And as much as it hurts, as much as he wants to grab this girl and kiss her silly, he can live with whatever happens from here on out. Because not having her by his side is trade enough for not having to watch her die. Maybe this was his sacrifice to keep her alive. 

It was who he was. The Wolverine to her Rogue. Who he always would be.

Even if he never got to be the Logan to her Marie.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Ficmas is for all-ages stories, so consider this a prelude to a steamier one I will one day write in which Rogue will discover the truth about the alternate timeline, and badger Logan into revealing how their relationship was different.


End file.
